Live data from Hacker News

Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

electrek.co

291–300 of 410 posts

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans routinely drive from LA to NYC without wrecking their cars. In fact, that's the normal outcome.

I've been driving on local and highway roads for 30 years now and I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car. Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure? The thing is, usually there is plenty of traffic ahead that acts very obviously different in situations like this that helps as well. All that to say that I…

Unless you're on your phone, with that clear of a view and that much space, 100% you would dodge that, especially in a sedan where your clearance is lower than a truck.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the same measure of success that we use for every company.

No. They are proxies. But not the truest measures of success.

Ok so how is SpaceX not succcessful. Please explain.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#293
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring Company. Whatever happened to those tunnels?

They've only built out the system at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and every other project seems to have fallen through.

> fallen through

That word choice.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#294

I would try to pass it between the wheels and would crash the same. At least for me there was nothing indicating there is not enough clearance.

Your eyes work differently when not looking at a screen.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel Waymo's LIDAR might have worked here

100% it would have. One of the main things the LiDAR system does is establish a "ground plane", which is the surface on which the car is expected to drive. Any hole or protrusions in that plane stick out like a sore thumb to a LiDAR system, you'll be able to see it in the raw data without much of a feature detector, so detecting them and reacting is fast and reliable. Contrast with Tesla's "vision-only" system, which…

Elon's Musk believes that sensor fusion doesn't work and is a fake science.

This is why FSD is still shit in late 2025 and drives like it's drunk.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#296

A lot of apologists say that "a human would have hit that". That's kind of irrelevant, this technology is meant to be safer and held to a higher standard. Comparing to a human is not a valid excuse...

Personally if the road was empty as here, I'd have steered around it.

This was really best possible driving conditions - bright day, straight dry road, no other cars around, and still it either failed to see it, or chose to run over it rather than steering around it or stopping. Of all the random things that could happen on the road, encountering a bit of debris under ideal driving conditions seems like it should be the sort of thing it would handle better.

And yet Tesla is rolling out robo taxis with issues like this still present.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#297
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends where in the US you drive. It’s a big country with independent state governments. It’s like saying I was driving in Romania and I was shocked by how bad European highways are. I lived in Texas and the stuff I saw on the highway was crazy, vacuum cleaners, decorated Christmas trees and refrigerators. Most parts of the country interstate and highway systems are pretty clean.

I lived in two parts of California, and New Jersey for almost three decades and I've traveled to a lot of the US for leisure or work. I honestly can't recall ever feeling like I was going through a markedly different area in either better or worse directions.

When it comes to road conditions it's often comical how different roads can be just across state or county lines. From almost completely destroyed roads barely holding together to a perfectly clean and flat asphalt road. Where I have noticed more trash off highways is rural towns or dense urban areas that run right alongside highways. I definitely noticed more trash in the south (Texas/Oklahoma/Louisiana) than north (Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan).

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#298
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German ones are still way way cleaner than US highways. Germany is also the country with the most traffic because it's kind of at the center of everything and pays roads with income tax instead of tolls. The French charge really high tolls and have very little traffic compared to Germany. They really don't have an excuse.

in germany trucks pay tolls for highways. Also all the gas is taxed and it goes into the federal budget that is then used to finance highways, so i would say everybody filling up is financing highways.

Austria has road tolls and similar tax on gas, so do France and Italy. Actually Diesel is even more expensive.

So still the cheapest roads to be on for foreigners.

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem can be sensors, even for humans. When a human's vision gets bad enough, they lose their license.

We had sensors that can beat "a human whose vision got bad enough to get the license revoked" used as far back as in the 2004 DARPA competition. That got us some of the way towards self-driving, but not all the way. AI was the main bottleneck back then. 20 years later, it still is.

We don't have a bottleneck anymore. We have Waymo. They seemed to have solved whatever the issue was...I wonder what the main difference between the Waymo system and the Tesla system is?

Re: Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles

#300

It seems well documented that the Tesla system is at level 2. and it requires "hands on supervision". Has Elon lied about the capabilities? Yes, on many occasions. Crashing your car to prove it seems lilke a waste. When the documentation is clear. """ Tesla Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) developed by Tesla, Inc. that provides partial vehicle automation, corresponding to Level 2 automation as…

No manufacturer has achieved Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy for road use.

Waymo has achieved Level 4, with hundreds of thousands of paid rides per week and a stellar safety record. But they're not technically a manufacturer I guess.

Post reply on HN